U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft had his gallbladder removed Tuesday in a 90-minute procedure that doctors pronounced successful, but which could keep him from his duties for at least another week or two. Ashcroft, 61, was expected to remain at George Washington University Hospital for four or five more days, extending a stay that began Thursday, when he was admitted to intensive care.

A woman had her gallbladder removed by a robot Wednesday, one day after the Da Vinci Surgical System was approved by federal regulators. The Da Vinci, approved for use at five U.S. hospitals Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration, enables surgeons to operate by manipulating joysticks at a computer terminal. Lenses inserted in the patient's body give the surgeon a 3-D view of the person's insides. Dr. William E. Kelley Jr.

Black bear gallbladders are so popular in Asian medicine that poachers are starting to threaten the species in North America. About 40,000 bears are legally hunted each year in the United States and Canada, but it's estimated an equal number are poached, said John Doggert, chief of the law enforcement for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We're finding carcasses with the gall bladder sliced out," said Judith Ball, general curator for Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo.

Doctors in Canada and Europe have used electrically generated shock waves to smash painful and often dangerous inoperable gallstones wedged in the bile duct, a researcher reported. "We are very encouraged by the initial success. We know the technique works and has no immediate side effects. But we don't know what will happen 10 years hence," said Dr. Laszlo Fried, associate professor of radiology at Dalhousie University Medical School in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Nineteen dieters have filed lawsuits claiming the Nutri-System weight-loss program led to gallbladder disease and accusing the company of fraud and negligence. The plaintiffs are women from the Miami and Ft. Lauderdale areas ranging in age from 17 to 60, one of their attorneys, Robert J. Fiore, said today. They filed separate lawsuits seeking unspecified damages Monday in Dade County Circuit Court.

Women who get too little vitamin C in their diet may be at greater risk of gallbladder disease, according to UC San Francisco researchers. Gallstones can form when bile, a liquid with enzymes that help digest dietary fat, becomes oversaturated with cholesterol. The cholesterol eventually hardens into stone-like material called gallstones. Vitamin C stimulates the conversion of cholesterol into bile acids, so low levels could enhance formation of stones. Dr.

In addition to ginseng, one of the strongest and most sought-after medicines in the Asian community is bear gallbladders, wildlife officials say. But there are few bears in Asia, they say, leaving a community with a demand that needs to be met elsewhere. And, according to wildlife officials, the demand is being met in the United States by people who buy animal parts and export them to Asia. Case in point: the June 23 arrest of Joseph S.

Flanked by the severed heads and drooling monsters he created for movies such as "Aliens" and "Slumber Party Massacre," Rick Lazzarini seems an unlikely pioneer for the health sciences. One might not expect the man behind television's Foster Farms chickens and Duracell boxers to know much about the human pancreas or bile duct.

A French American team has performed the first long-distance robotic surgery, with surgeons in New York City removing the gallbladder of a 68-year-old woman in Strasbourg. Although robotic surgery is now commonplace in at least 100 hospitals around the world, the successful 45-minute operation proves the feasibility of using it over long distances, opening the possibility of operations in the space station, at the poles, on battlefields and in Third World countries.

Adults with no health insurance face waits up to a year or longer for gallbladder or hernia surgery in Los Angeles County, a backlog that community clinic doctors say has worsened since the county downsized Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital last year. The elimination of most specialty care at King-Harbor, formerly known as King/Drew, has hit Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance the hardest, the doctors say.